When I was in school my father brought home an encyclopedia on insects. I was fascinated by the wonderful photography, the up-close shots and the array of colors. Inquisitive that I was,I read a lot about ants, bees and other colonial insects and how some African varieties can be poisonous and deadlier than sharks or piranhas in water. My only source of information were books then. Then as I got older the cable TV opened up many doors, in the form of Discovery and Animal Planet where I could enjoy more delightful insights about insects.
Today, I use computer as my reference book. I ended up working in close quarters with software professionals and suddenly there was a sea-change in the way I look at insect kingdom. I found that they are omnipresent. There is a software dictionary which has a lot of terms and rules about bugs. Read some highlights below:
- Bugs are not insects, but can be as irritating.
- They show up when least expected.
- They are very similar to the ones we see at home or in our gardens. Always make life miserable.
- They are present even in the simplest of programs.
- They call it the “SDLC” or Software Development Life Cycle, because it is similar to the life cycle of an insect, it never ends. Egg, larva, pupa, insect:: egg, larva,pupa,bug...
- There is no such thing as “bug life” because new ones appear as the present ones get fixed.
- There is no such thing as a “bug free” program. (Every body knows it.)
I would like to quote Murphy’s tech laws, before I end that “If it works, it's production. If it doesn't, it's a test.” And that
“The only program that runs perfectly every time, is a virus”
Amen!!!
